February 28th ~ {continued...}

1863 – Four Union gunboats destroyed the CSS Nashville near Fort McAllister, Ga. Popular during the Crimean War, the floating battery was revived by hard-pressed Confederates because the popular gunboats were not capable of doing the things that the batteries could do.

1864 – A major Union cavalry raid begins when General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick leads 3,500 troopers south from Stevensburg, Virginia. Aimed at Richmond, the raid sought to free Federal prisoners and spread word of President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in hopes of convincing Confederates to lay down their arms.

The president’s proclamation of December 1863 offered a pardon and restoration of property (except slaves, who were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation) to all Confederates. Kilpatrick took with him Colonel Ulrich Dahlgren to conduct the prisoner release while Kilpatrick covered him with the main force. To distract attention, Union infantry under General John Sedgwick and another cavalry detachment under General George Custer would feign an attack towards western Virginia. The forces split after crossing the Rappahannock River. Kilpatrick began tearing up the Virginia Central Railroad while Dahlgren approached Richmond from the west.

They were to rendezvous on the outskirts of Richmond. Kilpatrick arrived there on March 1 with General Wade Hampton’s cavalry in hot pursuit. Dahlgren was delayed when a black guide led him to a deep section of the James River. Finding no possibility to cross, Dahlgren hung the guide on the spot. Kilpatrick had to leave for the north before Dahlgren’s arrival, so Dahlgren and his men were cut off. The colonel and about 100 of his men were ambushed as they tried to rejoin Kilpatrick. Dahlgren was killed, and his body fell into Confederate hands. He was allegedly carrying papers that included instructions to burn Richmond and kill Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet.

The papers were published in the Richmond Daily Examiner, but it is not clear where the orders had come from or if they were even authentic. Some historians have suggested that they were forged by the Confederates to stir morale in Virginia. Kilpatrick suffered about 335 men killed, captured, or wounded. The raid accomplished little for the Union and the Confederate victory lifted southern morale.

1893 – Launching of USS Indiana (BB-1), first true battleship in U.S. Navy. USS Indiana (Battleship No. 1) was authorized in 1890 and commissioned five years later, she was a small battleship, though with heavy armor and ordnance. The ship also pioneered the use of an intermediate battery. She was designed for coastal defense and as a result her decks were not safe from high waves on the open ocean.

Indiana served in the Spanish–American War (1898) as part of the North Atlantic Squadron. She took part in both the blockade of Santiago de Cuba and the battle of Santiago de Cuba, which occurred when the Spanish fleet attempted to break through the blockade. Although unable to join the chase of the escaping Spanish cruisers, she was partly responsible for the destruction of the Spanish destroyers Plutón and Furor.

After the war she quickly became obsolete—despite several modernizations—and spent most of her time in commission as a training ship or in the reserve fleet, with her last commission during World War I as a training ship for gun crews. She was decommissioned for the third and final time in January 1919 and was shortly after reclassified Coast Battleship Number 1 so that the name Indiana could be reused. She was sunk in shallow water as a target in aerial bombing tests in 1920 and her hulk was sold for scrap in 1924.

1916 – Haiti became the first U.S. protectorate.

1917 – AP reported that Mexico and Japan would ally with Germany if US enters WW I.

1924 – U.S. troops were sent to Honduras to protect American interests during an election conflict.

1928 – Marines participated in the Battle of Bromaderos, Nicaragua.

1935 – DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents nylon.

1936 – The Japanese Army restored order in Tokyo and arrested officers involved in a coup.

February 28th ~ {continued...}

1940 – English divers recover three rotors from the Enigma enciphering machine on board the scuttled German submarine U-33.

1942 – There was a race riot at the Sojourner Truth Homes in Detroit.

1942 – Certain duties of former Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation transferred to Coast Guard temporarily by Executive Order 9083. The transfer was made permanent on July 16, 1946. Also, the U.S. Maritime Service was transferred to the Coast Guard from the War Shipping Administration on this date.

1942 – The heavy cruiser USS Houston is sunk in the Battle of Sunda Strait with 693 crew members killed. After a fierce battle of several hours duration, Houston and the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth were sunk. Five Japanese ships were sunk by friendly fire, of which two were refloated.

1942 – U S. Maritime Service transferred to Coast Guard from War Shipping Administration.

1942 – Japanese landed in Java, the last Allied bastion in Dutch East Indies.

1943 – The Norsk Hydro power station near Ryukan is badly damaged by a sabotage team of Norwegian soldiers who have been parachuted in from Britain. This plant is known to be in use by the Germans to produce “heavy water” for atomic research.

1944 – German forces launch a second offensive against the Anzio beachhead held by forces of the US 6th Corps (Truscott). Four German divisions attack on either side of the Cisterna-Anzio road, defended by the US 3rd Division. German forces fail to break through.

1945 – There are America landings at Puerto Princesa on Palawan by 8000 men of 41st Infantry Division (ORARNG). Admiral Fechteler leads a bombardment group of cruisers and destroyers and there is also support from land-based aircraft. There is little Japanese resistance to the landings.

1945 – U.S. tanks broke the natural defense line west of the Rhine and crossed the Erft River.

1946 – The U.S. Army declared that it would use the V-2 rocket to test radar as an atomic rocket defense system.

1951 – The last communist resistance south of the Han River collapsed.

1954 – The first color television sets using the NTSC standard are offered for sale to the general public.

1959 – Discoverer 1, an American spy satellite that is the first object intended to achieve a polar orbit, is launched. It failed to achieve orbit.

1962 – The 39th Signal battalion, a communications unit, is the first unit of US regular ground forces to arrive in Vietnam.

February 28th ~ {continued...}

1968 – Gen. Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, returns from his recent round of talks with Gen. William Westmoreland in Saigon and immediately delivers a written report to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Wheeler stated that despite the heavy casualties incurred during the Tet Offensive, North Vietnam and Viet Cong forces had the initiative and were “operating with relative freedom in the countryside.”

The communists had pushed South Vietnamese forces back into a “defensive posture around towns and cities,” seriously undermined the pacification program in many areas, and forced General Westmoreland to place half of his battalions in the still imperiled northernmost provinces, thus “stripping the rest of the country of adequate reserves” and depriving the U.S. command of “an offensive capability.” To meet the new enemy threat and regain the initiative, according to Wheeler, Westmoreland would need more men: “The add-on requested totals 206,756 spaces for a new proposed ceiling of 731,756.”

It was a major turning point in the war. To deny the request was to concede that the United States could impose no military solution in the conflict, but to meet it would require a call-up of reserves and vastly increased expenditures. Rather than making an immediate decision, President Johnson asked Defense Secretary Clark Clifford to conduct a thorough, high-level review of U.S. policy in Vietnam. A disgruntled staff member in the Johnson White House leaked the Wheeler-Westmoreland proposal for additional troops.

The story broke in the New York Times on March 10, 1968. With the images of the besieged U.S. Embassy in Saigon during the Tet Offensive still fresh in their minds, the press and the public immediately concluded that the extra troops must be needed because the U.S. and South Vietnamese had suffered a massive defeat. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was subjected to 11 hours of hearings before a hostile Congress on March 11 and 12. A week later, 139 members of the House voted for a resolution that called for a complete review of Johnson’s Vietnam policy.

Discontent in Congress mirrored the general sentiment in the country. In March, a poll revealed that 78 percent of Americans expressed disapproval with Johnson’s handling of the war. On March 22, President Johnson scaled down Westmoreland’s request and authorized 13,500 reinforcements. Shortly after, Johnson announced that Westmoreland would be brought home to be Army Chief of Staff. He was to be replaced by General Creighton Abrams.

1972 – The United States and People’s Republic of China sign the Shanghai Communiqué. The document pledged that it was in the interest of all nations for the United States and China to work towards the normalization of their relations, although this would not occur until the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations seven years later. The US and China also agreed that neither they nor any other power should “seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region”.

This was of particular importance to China, who shared a militarized border with the Soviet Union. Regarding the political status of Taiwan, in the communiqué the United States acknowledged the One-China policy (but did not endorse the PRC’s version of the policy) and agreed to cut back military installations on Taiwan. This “constructive ambiguity” (in the phrase of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who oversaw the American side of the negotiations) would continue to hinder efforts for complete normalization. The communiqué included wishes to expand the economic and cultural contacts between the two nations, although no concrete steps were mentioned.

1974 – The United States and Egypt re-established diplomatic relations after a seven-year break.

1980 – Blue crew of USS Francis Scott Key (SSBN-657) launches 4 Trident I (C-4) missiles in first C-4 Operational Test.

1982 – The FALN, a Puerto Rican Nationalist Group, bombed Wall Street.

1983 – M*A*S*H, the cynical situation comedy about doctors behind the front lines of the Korean War, airs its final episode on this day in 1983, after 11 seasons. The last episode drew 77 percent of the television viewing audience, the largest audience ever to watch a single TV show up to that time.

February 28th ~ {continued...}

1990 – Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla. on a secret mission to place a spy satellite in orbit.

1991 – A cease-fire was announced in Kuwait. Allied and Iraqi forces suspended their attacks as Iraq pledged to accept all United Nations resolutions concerning Kuwait. Tariq Aziz announces Iraq’s acceptance of all relevant U.N. Security Council Resolutions. Saddam Hussein calls on his troops to cease fire.

1993 – Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the ranch of the Branch Davidian sect under David Koresh in Waco, Texas. A shootout followed when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to serve warrants on the Branch Davidians; four agents and six Davidians were killed as a 51-day standoff began.

1993 – Three U.S. planes carried out the first mission to drop relief supplies over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1994 – In the first military action in the 45-year history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), U.S. fighter planes shoot down four Serbian warplanes engaged in a bombing mission in violation of Bosnia’s no-fly zone. The United States, 10 European countries, and Canada founded NATO in 1949 as a safeguard against Soviet aggression. With the end of the Cold War, NATO members approved the use of its military forces for peacekeeping missions in countries outside the alliance and in 1994 agreed to enforce U.N. resolutions enacted to bring about an end to the bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

In 1994 and 1995, NATO planes enforced the no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina and struck at Bosnian Serb military positions and airfields on a number of occasions. On December 20, 1995, NATO began the mass deployment of 60,000 troops to enforce the Dayton peace accords, signed in Paris by the leaders of the former Yugoslavia on December 14th.

The NATO troops took over from a U.N. peacekeeping force that had failed to end the fighting since its deployment in early 1992, although the U.N. troops had proved crucial in the distribution of humanitarian aid to the impoverished population of Bosnia. The NATO force, with its U.S. support and focused aim of enforcing the Dayton agreement, proved more successful in maintaining the peace in the war-torn region.

1995 – U.S. Marines swept ashore in Somalia to protect retreating U.N. peacekeepers.

1996 – President Clinton and the Congress agreed on a sanctions bill aimed at driving foreign investors from Cuba.

1997 – US Navy medium attack aircraft were retired by order of Pres. Clinton. Any deep-strike mission would be in the hands of the Air Force.

1998 – First flight of RQ-4 Global Hawk, the first unmanned aerial vehicle certified to file its own flight plans and fly regularly in U.S. civilian airspace.

2000 – It was reported that Iraq and Syria had established diplomatic ties that were cut in Aug 1980 when Damascus sided with Iran just before the Iran-Iraq war.

2003 – NASA released video taken aboard Columbia that had miraculously survived the fiery destruction of the space shuttle with the loss of all seven astronauts; in the footage, four of the crew members can be seen doing routine chores and admiring the view outside the cockpit.

2003 – Iraq agreed to begin destroying its Al Samoud 2 missiles within 24 hours.

2003 – Pentagon officials say that satellite imagery has detected Iraqi Republican Guard units moving south from Mosul to Tikrit, about 160km north-west of Baghdad, while other units are moving into residential areas of Baghdad.

2004 – Six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear program ended without any major breakthrough. The North denounced the United States, saying it wasn’t willing to reach a settlement.

2004 – Coast Guard units responded to an explosion aboard the 570-foot Singapore-flagged tanker Bow Mariner off the coast of Chincoteague, Virginia. The Bow Mariner was carrying 6.5 million gallons of industrial ethanol when it exploded and sank. The Coast Guard rescued six survivors.

2005 – Indonesia welcomed a move by the US to resume a small but high-profile US military training program that was frozen in the 1990s.

2007 – Carlos and Elsa Alvarez are sentenced to five and three year prison terms respectively after being convicted of spying for the Cuban government.

2011 – The United States freezes $30 billion in Libyan assets.

2011 – Frank Buckles, the last surviving veteran of World War I in the United States, passes away in Charles Town, West Virginia, aged 110.

2012 – The United States announces that it will provide $60 million of food and medical aid, but not weapons, to Syrian rebel fighters.

2013 – United States v. Manning: Bradley Manning pleads guilty to 10 counts out of 22 against him for leaking classified material in the Wiki Leaks case.

2013 – A temporary third radiation belt is discovered around planet Earth by NASA’s twin Van Allen Probes.

February 29th ~

29 February Facts:

A year that is evenly divisible by 100 is not a leap year unless it also is evenly divisible by 400. Explanation: The time required for Earth to make one lap around the sun — to go from vernal equinox to vernal equinox — is approximately 365.2422 days. Because the period of 365 days that our calendar assigns to the basic year falls approximately 0.2422 of a day short of the time it actually takes to orbit the sun, the calendar adds one day to every fourth year.

This quadrennial “leap year” causes the average duration of a year to be approximately 365.2500 days. Because this quadrennial adjustment overshoots its goal by approximately 0.0078 of one day, the calendar “skips” the quadrennial adjustment at the turn of each century.

This centennial “re-adjustment” causes the average duration of a year — over the long run — to be approximately 365.2400 days. Because this centennial readjustment overshoots its goal by approximately 0.0022 of one day, the calendar “un-skips” the centennial re-adjustment once every four centuries.

This quadricentennial “re-re-adjustment” causes the average duration of a year — over the very long run — to be approximately 365.2425 days. All of this has the effect of reducing the difference between our calendar and our actual orbit around the sun to approximately 0.0003 of a day — about 26 seconds.

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HISTORY OF LEAP YEAR

Roman Emperor Julius Caesar took the first stab at fixing the calendar when dates were no longer in sync with the seasons. First, he created one extra-long year – 445 days – to get things back on track. He followed that with a pattern of three 365-day years and one 366-day year – leap year. Fifteen centuries later, though, the calendar was off-kilter again. It turns out that Caesar’s plan created three extra leap years every 400 years.

So in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII came up with a way to fix the problem. That year, the calendar jumped from October 4 to October 15. Gregory also set up a new rule to get rid of those three extra leap years. Under the Gregorian calendar, only century years divisible by 400 are leap years. One in 1,461 people are “Leapies,” born on Leap Year Day. There are approximately 200,000 people in the United States with Leap Year Day birthdays and 4 million in the world.

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45 BC – The first Leap Day was recognized by proclamation of Julius Caesar. Under the old Roman calendar the last day of February was the last day of the year.

1504 – Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the West, used a correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into providing food for his crew.

February 29th ~ {continued...}

1704 – Deerfield, a frontier settlement in western Massachusetts, is attacked by a French and Native American force. Some 100 men, women, and children were massacred as the town was burned to the ground. The Deerfield raid was the bloodiest event of Queen Anne’s War, a conflict known to American historians as the second of the French and Indian Wars. The frontier conflict, named after the English monarch at the time, was to France and England a rather unimportant aspect of the War of the Spanish Succession.

To settlers in America, however, the rivalry of the two powers in the colonies was a serious concern, as the fighting meant not only raids by the French or the British but also the horrors of Indian tribal warfare. With the signing of the Peace of Utrecht in 1714, peace returned to the frontier. Thirty years later, it would be broken by the War of Austrian Succession, the third of the French and Indian Wars.

1796 – After Great Britain has accepted the Senate’s amendment of Jay’s Treaty, President Washington declares the treaty in effect. This diplomatic move brings France and the US to the brink of war.

1841 – John Philip Holland (b.1840), inventor of the modern submarine, was born in Liscannor, County Clare, into a family that had survived the Great Potato Famine. Following his immigration to America in 1873, Holland settled in Paterson, New Jersey where he taught school and, with financial backing from the Irish Fenian Society, began developing his first submarine. In 1881, Holland launched the Fenian Ram, a 31-foot-long submersible powered by a 15-horsepower internal combustion engine.

With Holland at the controls, the Ram dived 64 feet beneath New York Harbor that summer, only to be seized by the Fenians when they lost interest in the project. In 1895, the J.P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company, won a contract from the U.S. Navy to build a submarine. After one discouraging failure, the second submarine, the Holland VI, passed her sea trials and was purchased by the U.S. Navy on April 11, 1900 for $150,000.

1864 – Lt. William B. Cushing led a landing party from the USS Monticello to Smithville, NC, in an attempt to capture Confederate Brig. Gen. Louis Hebert, only to discover that Hebert and his men had already moved on Wilmington.

1864 – Union General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick’s cavalry raiders split into two wings on their way south to Richmond. Colonel Ulrich Dahlgren and 500 troopers swung out further west as Kilpatrick and 3,000 men rode on to the outskirts of Richmond. The raid stalled there, and Dahlgren was killed in an ambush. The raid was part of a plan to free 15,000 Union soldiers held near Richmond and spread word of President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which allowed a pardon and restoration of property for Confederates willing to cease the rebellion. Kilpatrick left the main Union army at Stevensburg, Virginia, on February 28 and crossed the Rappahannock River.

On February 29th, Kilpatrick split with the 21-year-old Dahlgren, one of the youngest colonels in the Union army. The weather turned bad as the detachments separated. Rain turned to sleet, and the riders had to battle icy branches and cold, inky blackness as night fell. Dahlgren rode west and picked up a guide, a black youth named Martin Robinson. Robinson professed to know of a crossing of the James River west of Richmond. When they arrived at the spot, there was no way across the swollen river. Dahlgren flew into a rage and ordered Robinson hung.

On March 1st, Dahlgren and 200 men were ambushed and the young colonel was killed. The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid was a failure for the Union. Some 340 men and 1,000 horses were lost, few Confederates paid attention to the copies of the amnesty proclamation that were left by the cavalry, and no Union prisoners were freed. The raid was the last fighting until General Ulysses S. Grant began his epic campaign in May.

February 29th ~ {continued...}

1892 – St. Petersburg, Florida, in Pinellas County, is incorporated. The city is located on a peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It is connected to mainland Florida to the north; with the city of Tampa to the east by causeways and bridges across Tampa Bay; and to Bradenton in the south by the Sunshine Skyway Bridge (Interstate 275), which traverses the mouth of the bay. It is also served by Interstates 175 and 375, which branch off I-275 into the southern and northern areas of downtown respectively. The Gandy Bridge, conceived by George Gandy and opened in 1924, was the first causeway to be built across Tampa Bay, connecting St. Petersburg and Tampa cities without a circuitous 43-mile (69 km) trip around the bay through Oldsmar.

1904 – President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a seven-member commission to hasten completion of the Panama Canal.

1916 – The German fleet is given orders to attack armed merchant shipping without warning.

1936 – The Second Neutrality Act is passed, extending the act of 1935 to May 1, 1937 but adding a prohibition against granting any US loans or credits to belligerents.

1944 – On Los Negros in the Admiralty Islands, 1000 men from the US 5th Cavalry Regiment (General Chase) land at Hyane Harbor. General MacArthur and Admiral Kinkaid, commanding the US 7th Fleet, are present offshore and decide to convert the landings into a full-scale occupation. Japanese counterattacks during the night are defeated.

1944 – German forces continue limited attacks on the Anzio beachhead; there is a heavy artillery bombardment. Poor weather prevents a full-scale effort.

1944 – Over one billion dollars in estimated profit was made by American black marketeers during fiscal year 1943, announced national Office of Price Administration director Chester Bowles. Black market goods are bought or sold at prices or in amounts above the legal limits set by the government in times of shortage or conservation. Rationing and fixed prices during World War II led to a rise in black market sales in the U.S., especially with meat, sugar, tires, and gasoline. While rationing ended with the war, scarcities in automobiles and building supplies kept the black market going strong for years to follow.

1952 – Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd, the newly-appointed commandant for POW camp Koje-do, was warned that many of the compounds might “be controlled by the violent leadership of Communists or anti-Communist groups.” He was told “this subversive control is extremely dangerous and can result in further embarrassment to the” United Nations Command. Leaders were worried that rioting in the camps would undermine armistice negotiations.

1952 – Owen Lattimore, one of the more famous figures of the “Red Scare” in the United States during the 1950s, testifies before a Senate subcommittee that he might have been inaccurate in some of his previous testimony. Lattimore’s admissions resulted in his being charged with perjury and years of legal wrangling.

February 29th ~ {continued...}

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson revealed that the U.S. secretly developed the Lockheed A-11 jet fighter.

1968 – The President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders releases its report, condemning racism as the primary cause of the recent surge of riots. The report, which declared that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white–separate and unequal,” called for expanded aid to African American communities in order to prevent further racial violence and polarization. Unless drastic and costly remedies were undertaken at once, the report said, there would be a “continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values.”

The report identified more than 150 riots or major disorders between 1965 and 1968 and blamed “white racism” for sparking the violence–not a conspiracy by African American political groups as some claimed. Statistics for 1967 alone included 83 people killed and 1,800 injured–the majority of them African Americans–and property valued at more than $100 million damaged or destroyed. The 11-member commission, headed by Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois, was appointed by President Johnson in July 1967 to uncover the causes of urban riots and recommend solutions.

1968 – Robert McNamara resigned as US Secretary of Defense after the Tet disaster. He was succeeded by Clark Clifford for 9 months who worked to reverse US policy in Vietnam.

2004 – Haiti’s Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned and flew into exile. The capital fell into chaos, and the US said international peacekeepers, including Americans, would be deployed soon. Boniface Alexandre, the Supreme Court Justice, took over as interim president. PM Yvon Neptune continued as head of the government. Guy Philippe (36), head of a band of former exiled soldiers, said his forces would stop fighting.

2008 – The Presidency Council of Iraq approves the execution of Saddam Hussein’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as “Chemical Ali”, for his role in the Al-Anfal Campaign against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

March 1st ~

1642 – Georgeana, Massachusetts, now York, Maine, became the first American city to incorporate. First settled in 1624, the plantation was originally called Agamenticus, the Abenaki term for the York River. In 1638, settlers changed the name to Bristol after Bristol, England, from which they had immigrated. Envisioning a great city arising from the wilderness, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, lord proprietor of Maine under the Plymouth patent, named the capital of his province Gorgeana.

1713 – The siege and destruction of Fort Neoheroka begins during the Tuscarora War in North Carolina. The fort was besieged and ultimately attacked by a colonial force consisting of an army from the neighboring Province of South Carolina, under the command of Colonel James Moore and made up mainly of Indians including Yamasee, Apalachee, Catawba, Cherokee, and many others. The siege lasted for more than three weeks, to around March 22nd.

Hundreds of men, women and children were burned to death in a fire that destroyed the fort. Approximately 170 more were killed outside the fort while approximately 400 were taken to South Carolina where they were sold into slavery. The defeat of the Tuscaroras, once the most powerful indigenous nation in the North Carolina Territory, opened up North Carolina’s interior to further expansion by European settlers. The supremacy of the Tuscaroras in the state was broken forever. Most moved north to live among the Iroquois.

1776 – French minister Charles Gravier advised his Spanish counterpart to support the American rebels against the English.

1780 – Pennsylvania became the first U.S. state to abolish slavery (for new-borns only). It was followed by Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, New York in 1785, and New Jersey in 1786. Massachusetts abolished slavery through a judicial decision in 1783.

1781 – The Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation.

1790 – Congress authorized the first U.S. census. The Connecticut Compromise was a proposal for two houses in the legislature-one based on equal representation for each state, the other for population-based representation-that resolved the dispute between large and small states at the Constitutional Convention. Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman’s proposal led to the first nationwide census in 1790. The population was determined to be 3,929,625, which included 697,624 slaves and 59,557 free blacks. The most populous state was Virginia, with 747,610 people and the most populous city was Philadelphia with 42,444 inhabitants.

1792 – US Presidential Succession Act was passed.

1803 – Ohio is admitted as the 17th U.S. state. The name “Ohio” originated from Iroquois word ohi-yo’, meaning “great river” or “large creek”. The state was originally partitioned from the Northwest Territory. Although there are conflicting narratives regarding the origin of the nickname, Ohio is historically known as the “Buckeye State” (relating to the Ohio buckeye tree) and Ohioans are also known as “Buckeyes”.

1836 – A convention of delegates from 57 Texas communities convenes in Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas, to deliberate independence from Mexico.

1845 – President Tyler signed a congressional resolution to annex the Republic of Texas.

March 1st ~ {continued...}

1862 – U.S.S. Tyler, Lieutenant Gwin, and U.S.S. Lexington, Lieutenant Shirk, engaged Confederate forces preparing to strongly fortify Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing), Tennessee. Under cover of the gunboats’ cannon, a landing party of sailors and Army sharpshooters was put ashore from armed boats to determine Confederate strength in the area. Flag Officer Foote commended Gwin for his successful “amphibious” attack where several sailors met their death along with their Army comrades. At the same time he added: “But I must give a general order that no commander will land men to make an attack on shore. Our gunboats are to be used as forts, and as they have no more men than are necessary to man the guns, and as the Army must do the shore work, and as the enemy want nothing better than to entice our men on shore and overpower them with superior numbers, the commanders must not operate on shore, but confine themselves to their vessels.”

1864 – President Lincoln nominates Ulysses S. Grant for the newly revived rank of lieutenant general. At the time, George Washington was the only other man to have held that rank. Winfield Scott also attained the title but by brevet only; he did not actually command with it. The promotion carried Grant to the supreme command of Union forces and capped one of the most remarkable success stories of the war.

Born in Ohio in 1822, Grant attended West Point and graduated in 1843, 21st in a class of 39. He served in the Mexican War in 1847 to 1848 and on the frontier in the 1850s. During this time, Grant acquired experience in logistics and the supply of troops, developing skills that later made him a success during the Civil War. He also developed a reputation as a heavy drinker, and he denied charges of drunkenness throughout the war. When the Civil War erupted, Grant was not in the service and was working as a clerk in his father’s store in Galena, Illinois. Grant reenlisted after Fort Sumter fell in April 1861; his first assignment was to raise troops in Illinois.

In June, the governor appointed him colonel of the 21st Illinois. After leading his regiment to protect a railroad in Missouri, Grant was promoted to brigadier general on July 31, 1861. In early 1862, Grant won the first major Union victories of the war when he captured Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. For the next two years he was the most successful general in the army. His campaign to capture Vicksburg was one of the most efficient offensives of the war, and the Yankees captured the Mississippi River and most of Tennessee under his leadership.

Lincoln replaced Henry Halleck as the commander of all Union armies when he elevated Grant to the rank of lieutenant general. Unlike Halleck, Grant did not serve from behind a desk; he took the field with the largest Federal force, the Army of the Potomac, as he moved against Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Virginia.

1867 – Nebraska becomes the 37th U.S. state; Lancaster, Nebraska is renamed Lincoln and becomes the state capital. Nebraska gets its name from the archaic Otoe words Ñí Brásge, pronounced [ɲĩbɾasꜜkɛ] (contemporary Otoe Ñí Bráhge), or the Omaha Ní Btháska, pronounced [nĩbɫᶞasꜜka], meaning “flat water”, after the Platte River that flows through the state.

1873 – E. Remington and Sons in Ilion, New York begins production of the first practical typewriter.

1875 – Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1883.

1876 – Nuova Ottavia, an Italian Ship, grounded off the Jones Hill North Carolina Life-Saving Station. The rescue attempt by the crew of that Life-Saving station resulted in the loss of seven surfmen, the first deaths in the line of duty since the service started with paid crews in 1870. Among the dead was African-American Surfman, Lewis White.

1893 – The US Diplomatic Appropriation Act authorized the rank of ambassador.

1893 – Electrical engineer Nikola Tesla gives the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, Missouri.

March 1st ~ {continued...}

1912 – Albert Berry makes the first parachute jump from an airplane at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. Berry jumped from a Benoist pusher biplane from 1,500 feet (457 m) and landed successfully. The pilot was Tony Jannus. The 36 foot (11 m) diameter parachute was contained in a metal canister attached to the underside of the plane – when Berry dropped from the plane his weight pulled the parachute from the canister. Rather than being attached to the parachute by a harness Berry was seated on a trapeze bar. According to Berry he dropped 500 feet (152 m) before the parachute opened.

1913 – The US Federal income tax took effect (16th amendment).

1916 – Germany began attacking ships in the Atlantic.

1917 – The U.S. government releases the unencrypted text of the Zimmermann Telegram to the public.

1927 – A system of broadcasting weather reports by radio on four lightships on the Pacific Coast was put into effect.

1936 – The Hoover Dam is completed.

1941 – “Captain America” first appeared in a comic book.

1941 – Nazi extermination camps begin full operation. These include Auschwitz, Bamberg, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Chelmno, Jena, Sobibor and Treblinka. Over 2.600.000 Polish Jews are among those killed during the course of the war. Over 12.000 people would be killed daily at Auschwitz alone. By 1945 nearly 6 million Jews and more than 3 million Communists, gypsies, socialists and other dissidents will be exterminated.

1941 – The US Navy forms a Support Force for the Atlantic Fleet. The main part of this unit is made up from three destroyer squadrons of 27 ships.

1941 – Nashville radio station W47NV begins transmitting. The station was the first in the country to receive a license for FM radio transmission: All previous commercial stations transmitted via AM, which was more prone to static and interference. The station started its FM broadcast with a commercial for Nashville’s Standard Candy Company.

1942 – American military authorities, angered over the destruction at Pearl Harbor, order Rear Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Maj. Gen. Walter Short, the top Navy and Army officers in Hawaii at the time, court martialed. When cooler heads prevail, the Army and Navy create Boards of Inquiry to examine the case.

1942 – U-656 becomes the first German submarine of World War II to be sunk by Naval air (VP-82). The attack was carried out by Ensign William Tepuni piloting a Hudson bomber with Patrol Squadron 82 (VP-82). Two weeks later VP-82 pilot, Chief Aviation Machinist’s Mate Donald Mason, sank U-503 southeast of the Virgin Rocks.

1942 – Baseball decided that players in military can’t play when on furlough.

1942 – The remainder of Doorman’s naval squadron withdraws from Java fighting rear guard actions in the Sunda Strait. The force loses three cruisers and four destroyers. Japanese forces land with little or no opposition on Java at Kragan, Merak and Eretenwetan.

1942 – The “Flying Tigers” volunteer air force under the command of Claire Chennault, move to an RAF bomber base after their exceptional air defense of Rangoon.

1944 – On Los Negros, US forces eliminate some small Japanese forces that infiltrated their lines during the night.

March 1st ~ {continued...}

1945 – President Roosevelt, back from the Yalta Conference, proclaimed the meeting a success when he addressed a joint session of Congress.

1945 – Munchen-Gladbach and Neuss fall to the US 9th Army, which is now advancing rapidly toward the Rhine. The attacks of US 1st Army toward Cologne are continuing as are the efforts of US 3rd Army near the River Kyll and south of Trier.

1945 – On Iwo Jima, forces of US 5th Amphibious Corps now hold both the first and second of the island’s airfields and have a foothold at the southern end of the third. There is intensive fighting all along the line.

1945 – Japanese resistance in Manila is confined to a few blocks in the administrative area of the city. Nearer the landing area at Lingayen Gulf there are renewed efforts by US 1st Corps in the direction of Baguio and north along the coast.

1945 – Part of US Task Force 58 conducts air strikes on targets on Okinawa and nearby shipping. Two small Japanese warships are sunk.

1950 – Klaus Fuchs was sentenced in London to 14 years for atomic espionage. Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German-born British theoretical physicist and atomic spy who in 1950 was convicted of supplying information from the American, British and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after the Second World War. While at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and later the early models of the hydrogen bomb.

After the Second World War broke out in Europe, he was interned on the Isle of Man, and later in Canada. After he returned to Britain in 1941, he became an assistant to Rudolf Peierls, working on “Tube Alloys” – the British atomic bomb project. He began passing information on the project to the Soviet Union through Ruth Kuczynski, codenamed “Sonia”, a German communist and a major in Soviet Military Intelligence who had worked with Richard Sorge’s spy ring in the Far East.

In 1943, Fuchs and Peierls went to Columbia University, in New York City, to work on the Manhattan Project. In August 1944 Fuchs joined the Theoretical Physics Division at the Los Alamos Laboratory, working under Hans Bethe. His chief area of expertise was the problem of implosion (mechanical process), necessary for the development of the plutonium bomb. After the war he worked at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell as the head of the Theoretical Physics Division. In January 1950, Fuchs confessed that he was a spy.

He was sentenced to fourteen years’ imprisonment and stripped of his British citizenship. He was released in 1959, after serving nine years and emigrated to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), where he was elected to the Academy of Sciences and the SED central committee. He was later appointed deputy director of the Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf, where he served until he retired in 1979.

1951 – U.N. forces opened a major attack on the central front west of Hoengsong.

1953 – Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke and collapses; he dies four days later.

1954 – The US performed an atmospheric nuclear test at Bikini Island. The No. 5 Fukuryu-maru was trolling for tuna off the Bikini atoll in the Pacific. 11 crew members died in the half-century since the exposure, at least six of them from liver cancer. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 66 nuclear tests at Bikini as part of “Operation Crossroads.” In 1955 the US gave Japan $2 million in compensation.

1954 – Ted Williams fractures collarbone in 1st game of spring training after flying 39 combat missions without injury in Korean War.

March 1st ~ {continued...}

1954 – In the U.S. Capitol, four members of an extremist Puerto Rican nationalist group fire more than 30 shots at the floor of the House of Representatives from a visitors’ gallery, injuring five U.S. representatives. Alvin Bentley of Michigan, George Fallon of Maryland, Ben Jensen of Iowa, Clifford Davis of Tennessee, and Kenneth Roberts of Alabama all eventually recovered from their gunshot wounds and returned to their seats in Congress. Three of the Puerto Rican terrorists were detained immediately after the shooting, and the fourth was captured later. The group was protesting the new constitution of Puerto Rico, which granted the U.S. Congress ultimate authority over the commonwealth’s affairs.

1955 – The second detonation in the Operation Teapot nuclear tests is conducted. Codenamed Tesla, predicted yield was 3.5-7 kilotons. The explosive used was Cyclotol 75/25. The nuclear system was a small diameter system only 10 inches wide and 39.5 inches long and weighed 785 lb. Actual yield was 7kilotons.

1958 – Doctors declared that President Eisenhower had fully recovered from his stroke.

1960 – The Beaufort (South Carolina) Auxiliary Air Station was redesignated a Marine Corps Air Station.

1962 – A US Army memorandum was put out titled “Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba.”

1962 – US-British nuclear test experiment took place in Nevada.

1965 – Ambassador Maxwell Taylor informs South Vietnamese Premier Phan Huy Quat that the United States is preparing to send 3,500 U.S. Marines to Vietnam to protect the U.S. airbase at Da Nang. Three days later, a formal request was submitted by the U.S. Embassy, asking the South Vietnamese government to “invite” the United States to send the Marines.
Rumors of the imminent arrival of American troops soon circulated in Saigon, but there was no official word from either government until March 6 when the Johnson administration publicly confirmed that it would be sending the Marines to South Vietnam.

1966 – The Ba’ath Party takes power in Syria.

1971 – A bomb explodes in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., causing an estimated $300,000 in damage but hurting no one. A group calling itself the “Weather Underground” claimed credit for the bombing, which was done in protest of the ongoing U.S.-supported Laos invasion. The so-called Weathermen were a radical faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); the Weathermen advocated violent means to transform American society.

The philosophical foundations of the Weathermen were Marxist in nature; they believed that militant struggle was the key to striking out against the state to build a revolutionary consciousness among the young, particularly the white working class. Their primary tools to achieving these ends were arson and bombing. Among the other targets of Weathermen bombings were the Long Island Court House, the New York Police Department headquarters, the Pentagon, and the State Department.

1973 – Black September storms the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, resulting in the assassination of three Western hostages. Carried out by the Black September Organization in 1973, the attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum was a terrorist attack which took ten diplomats hostage. After President Richard Nixon stated that he refused to negotiate with terrorists, and insisted that “no concessions” would be made, the three Western hostages were killed.

1974 – Seven people, including former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, former Attorney General John Mitchell and former assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian, were indicted on charges of conspiring to obstruct justice in connection with the Watergate break-in. They were convicted the following January, although Mardian’s conviction was later reversed.

March 1st ~ {continued...}

1977 – US extended territorial waters to 200 miles.

1984 – NASA launched Landsat-D Prime (Landsat 5) to map the Earth.

1985 – The Pentagon accepted the theory that an atomic war would block the sun, causing a “nuclear winter”.

1988 – President Reagan arrived in Brussels, Belgium, for the first NATO summit in six years.

1990 – The controversial Seabrook, N.H. nuclear power plant won federal permission to go on line after two decades of protests and legal struggles.

1991 – President Bush said “we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all” following the allied victory in the Gulf War.

1991 – The US Embassy in Kuwait officially reopened.

1991 – US military specialists surveyed and then detonated a bunker at Kamisiyah, Iraq. The site had been declared a chemical weapons storage area by Iraq after the Gulf War. No trace of chemical agents were found before or after but US & UN inspections teams had earlier found nerve agent rockets and mustard gas shells in open pits at the site.

It was later acknowledged by the Pentagon that more than 15,000 US troops may have been exposed to nerve gas due to the detonations. Defense Department logs of this period were later reported lost. In April 1997 the CIA acknowledged errors that led to the demolition.

1995 – Somalia militiamen loyal to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid seized control of the Mogadishu airport after peacekeepers withdrew.

1996 – President Clinton slapped economic sanctions on Colombia, concluding that Colombian authorities had not fully cooperated with the US war on drugs.

1998 – Iraqi officials and independent experts report that Iraq’s oil production system has fallen into such disrepair that Iraq cannot take full advantage of a recent United Nations Security Council resolution that more than doubled U.N.-authorized Iraqi oil sales to $5.26 billion every six months. Iraq says that, under current conditions, it can sell only $4 billion worth of oil over the next six months, unless it is allowed to purchase more equipment. Experts say that Iraq’s production system needs $800 million of repairs, and that these repairs could take a year or more to complete.

1999 – The 1997 Ottawa Treaty, banning the use, production, transfer and storage of land mines, went into effect. 133 countries honored the treaty but the US and China had not signed it. Participating nations agreed to destroy anti-personnel land mines within 4 years and to get them out of fields within 10.

1999 – US warplanes dropped over 30 laser-guided bombs on military targets in northern Iraq.

2001 – In Ecuador 7 foreign oil workers (a Chilean, an Argentine, a New Zealander and four Americans), kidnapped last October, were released following a $13 million ransom.

2002 – Operation Anaconda begins in which the United States military and CIA Paramilitary Officers, working with allied Afghan military forces, and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and non-NATO forces attempted to destroy al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. The operation took place in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains southeast of Zormat. This operation was the first large-scale battle in the United States War in Afghanistan since the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.

March 1st ~ {continued...}

2002 – President Bush approved plans to send some 100 US troops to Yemen to help train the nation’s military to fight terrorists.

2002 – The space shuttle Columbia with 7 astronauts blasted into orbit on an 11-day mission that included work on the Hubble Space Telescope.

2002 – NASA scientists said that vast ice fields had been detected under the surface of Mars with a gamma ray spectrometer on the Odyssey orbiter.

2003 – The US designated 3 rebel groups in Chechnya as terrorist organizations linked to al-Qaeda and imposed a freeze on their US assets.

2003 – Arab leaders held a summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The UAE became the 1st Arab country to call for Saddam Hussein to step down.

2003 – Iraq destroyed 4 of over 100 Al Samoud 2 missiles and agreed with the UN on a timetable to dismantle the rest of the missile program.

2003 – In Pakistan a joint raid outside Islamabad by CIA and Pakistani agents led to the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, along with 2 others. Documents and computer files later revealed that the al Qaeda biochemical weapons program was well advanced.

2003 – The Turkish parliament votes narrowly against allowing 62,000 US forces to use Turkey as a platform for a possible invasion of Iraq from the north.

2003 – Administrative control of the Coast Guard, Customs Service, and the United States Secret Service transferred to the newly created Department of Homeland Security.

2004 – US officials said the United States has turned over seven Russian citizens who were being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

2004 – In Haiti rebels rolled into the capital and were met by hundreds of residents dancing in the streets and cheering the ouster of Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide. U.S. Marines and French troops moved to take control of the impoverished country as Aristide arrived in South Africa. There were reports of reprisal killings.

2004 – Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the Central African Republic said in a telephone interview that he was “forced to leave” Haiti by U.S. military forces.

2004 – Iraqi politicians agreed on an interim constitution with 2 official languages, a wide ranging bill of rights and a single chief executive, bridging a gulf between members over the role of Islam in the future government.

2007 – The United States formally charges David Hicks with aiding the Taliban. David Matthew Hicks (born 7 August 1975) is an Australian who was convicted by the United States Guantanamo military commission under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, on charges of providing material support for terrorism. Hicks was detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay detention camp from 2001 until 2007 following earlier para-military training at Al Farouq training camp in Afghanistan during 2001. He was the first person tried under the new law for military commissions.

2013 – Budget sequestration comes into effect today in the United States Government. The budget sequestration in 2013 refers to the automatic spending cuts to United States federal government spending in particular categories of outlays that were initially set to begin on January 1, 2013, as an austerity fiscal policy as a result of Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), and were postponed by two months by the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 until March 1 when this law went into effect.

2013 – The Space X Falcon 9 supply rocket launches from Cape Canaveral SLC-40 as scheduled, but encounters problems once in orbit.

2013 – Boston Dynamics upgrades the prototype United States Army robot Big Dog with an arm strong enough to hurl cinderblocks.

March 2nd ~

1776 – Colonel Knox arrived near Boston with 80 sleds packed with cannons, mortars and other heavy equipment in February and General Washington saw his chance. Even though 2,000 of his 9,000 soldiers didn’t have muskets, he figured out the perfect plan. On March 2 and 3, 1776, soldiers fired all night into the city of Boston from the west. This was a camouflage of what was really happening. South of the city there were hills named Dorchester Heights which reminded General Washington of Bunker and Breed’s Hills. The men without guns moved the artillery brought by Colonel Knox south to Dorchester Heights and set them up so they could protect their gunners and could hit the British in the city.

1776 – The Battle of the Rice Boats. A group of boats containing rice are the target of a British attack on March 2, 1776. The Council of Safety reacts quickly, ordering the local militia to set boats on fire and drive the British away. The Inverness, loaded with rice and deerskins, is set on fire and cut loose, drifting into the brig Nelly. While some 500 Whigs from South Carolina join the 600 Georgia rebels, the two ships drift downstream, setting three more ships on fire. Royal Governor Wright, who has fled tot the relative safety of the British vessels barely escapes.

1781 – Maryland ratified the Articles of Confederation. She was the last state to sign.

1792 – Congress authorized the revenue cutters to fire on merchant ships who refused to “bring to.”

1793 – Samuel Houston, the first president of the independent Republic of Texas, is born in Rockbridge County, Virginia.

1797 – The Directory of Great Britain authorized vessels of war to board and seize neutral vessels, particularly if the ships were American.

1799 – Congress standardized US weights and measures.

1799 – Congress authorized that “Revenue Cutters shall, whenever the President of the United States shall so direct, cooperate with the Navy of the United States. During which time they shall be under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, and the expenses thereof shall be defrayed by the agents of the Navy Department.”

1799 – Congress authorized revenue cutter officers to board all ships of the United States within four leagues of the U.S., if bound for the U.S. and then search and examine them, certifying manifest, sealing hatches and remaining on board until they arrived in port. They were also authorized to search ships of other nations in United States’ waters and “perform such other duties for the collection and security of the Revenue” as directed by the Secretary of the Treasury.

1799 – Congress authorized cutters and boats to be “distinguished from other vessels by an ensign and pendant” with the marks thereon prescribed by the President of the United States, to fire on vessels who refused to bring to after the pendant and ensign had been hoisted and a gun fired as a signal, masters to be indemnified from any penalties or actions for damages for so doing, and be admitted to bail if any one is killed or wounded by such firing.

On August 1, 1799, Secretary Oliver Wolcott, Jr., prescribed that the ” ensign and pennant’’ should consist of “Sixteen perpendicular stripes, alternate red and white, the union of the ensign to be the arms of the United States in dark blue on a white field.” There were sixteen states in the Union at that time.

March 2nd ~ {continued...}

1807 – The U.S. Congress passes an act to “prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States…from any foreign kingdom, place, or country.” The first shipload of African captives to North America arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1619, but for most of the 17th century, European indentured servants were far more numerous in the North American British colonies than were African slaves. However, after 1680, the flow of indentured servants sharply declined, leading to an explosion in the African slave trade.

By the middle of the 18th century, slavery could be found in all 13 colonies and was at the core of the Southern colonies’ agricultural economy. By the time of the American Revolution, the English importers alone had brought some three million captive Africans to the Americas. After the war, as slave labor was not a crucial element of the Northern economy, most Northern states passed legislation to abolish slavery. However, in the South, the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made cotton a major industry and sharply increased the need for slave labor. Tension arose between the North and the South as the slave or free status of new states was debated.

In January 1807, with a self-sustaining population of over four million slaves in the South, some Southern congressmen joined with the North in voting to abolish the African slave trade, an act that became effective January 1, 1808. The widespread trade of slaves within the South was not prohibited, however, and children of slaves automatically became slave themselves, thus ensuring a self-sustaining slave population in the South. Great Britain also banned the African slave trade in 1807, but the trade of African slaves to Brazil and Cuba continued until the 1860s. By 1865, some 12 million Africans had been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, and more than one million of these individuals had died from mistreatment during the voyage. In addition, an unknown number of Africans died in slave wars and forced marches directly resulting from the Western Hemisphere’s demand for African slaves.

1815 – To put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates, the United States declared war on Algiers.

1819 – Territory of Arkansas was organized.

1825 – Roberto Cofresí, one of the last successful Caribbean pirates, is defeated in combat and captured by authorities. The Capture of the El Mosquito refers to the defeat of Roberto Cofresí and his pirate ship off the port town of Boca Del Infierno, Puerto Rico by American and Spanish forces in March 1825. United States Navy ships of the West Indies Squadron, with help from the Spanish Military, heavily damaged Cofresi’s vessel and forced him to abandon her and escape to shore where he was later captured by Puerto Rican authorities and executed.

1836 – During the Texas Revolution, a convention of American Texans meets at Washington-on-the-Brazos and declares the independence of Texas from Mexico. The delegates chose David Burnet as provisional president and confirmed Sam Houston as the commander in chief of all Texan forces. The Texans also adopted a constitution that protected the free practice of slavery, which had been prohibited by Mexican law. Meanwhile, in San Antonio, Santa Anna’s siege of the Alamo continued, and the fort’s 185 or so American defenders waited for the final Mexican assault.

Santa Anna had ordered that no prisoners be taken, and all the Texan and American defenders were killed in brutal hand-to-hand fighting. The only survivors of the Alamo were a handful of civilians, mostly women and children. Several hundred of Santa Anna’s men died during the siege and storming of the Alamo. Six weeks later, a large Texan army under Sam Houston surprised Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinto. Shouting “Remember the Alamo!” the Texans defeated the Mexicans and captured Santa Anna.

The Mexican dictator was forced to recognize Texas’ independence and withdrew his forces south of the Rýo Grande. Texas sought annexation by the United States, but both Mexico and antislavery forces in the United States opposed its admission into the Union. For nearly a decade, Texas existed as an independent republic, and Houston was Texas’ first elected president. In 1845, Texas joined the Union as the 28th state, leading to the outbreak of the Mexican-American War.

March 2nd ~ {continued...}

1853 – The Territory of Washington was organized after separating from Oregon Territory.

1859 – Launch of Saginaw at Mare Island, first Navy ship built on West Coast of U.S.

1861 – The Territory of Nevada was created by an act of Congress. The first elected governor of the state was Henry G. Blasdel. US Congress created the Dakota & Nevada Territories out of the Nebraska & Utah territories.

1861 – U.S. Revenue Schooner Henry Dodge, First Lieutenant William F. Rogers, USRM, was seized at Galveston, as Texas joined the Confederacy.

1865 – General Lee proposed peace to Grant. President Abraham Lincoln rejected Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s plea for peace talks, demanding unconditional surrender.

1865 – Union General George Custer’s troops rout Confederate General Jubal Early’s force, bringing an end to fighting in the Shenandoah Valley. The Shenandoah Valley was the scene of many battles and skirmishes during the Civil War. It was located directly in the path of armies invading from the south–as Confederate General Robert E. Lee did during the 1863 Gettysburg campaign-and the north. The fertile valley could sustain armies, and the gentle terrain allowed for rapid troop movement.

In 1862, Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson staged a brilliant campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, defeating three Yankee armies with quick marching and bold attacks. In 1864, Early drove through the valley to threaten Washington, D.C., as he tried to relieve pressure on Lee, who was pinned down near Richmond. That fall, General Ulysses S. Grant, the Union commander, dispatched General Philip Sheridan to stop Early. At Cedar Creek on October 19, Sheridan achieved his goal. The Confederates were soundly defeated, but the remnants of Early’s force lingered at the southern end of the valley through the winter of 1864 and 1865. Grant ordered Sheridan to move further west and destroy a railroad in southwestern Virginia. As Sheridan marched from the valley, Early sent a few hundred cavalry under General Thomas Rosser to block his path.

On March 1, Rosser set fire to a bridge along the middle fork of the Shenandoah River, but Custer, leading the advance units of Sheridan’s army, charged across the burning span and extinguished the fire before the bridge was destroyed. The next day, Custer followed Sheridan’s orders and chased down the bulk of Early’s force, which numbered about 2,000. Custer and about 5,000 troops found the Confederates entrenched along a ridge near Waynesboro. Part of the Yankee army shelled the Rebel position, while the rest slipped undetected through some woods that stood between Early’s line and the South River. Custer gave the order in the late afternoon, and the Union troops stormed out of the woods and swarmed over the Confederate trenches from the rear.

In a short time, 80 percent of the Confederates were captured and only nine Federal troops were killed. Early and his staff narrowly escaped over the Blue Ridge Mountains, marking the end of the Confederate presence in the Shenandoah Valley.

March 2nd ~ {continued...}

1867 – The first Reconstruction Act was passed by Congress, it divided the South into five districts, each governed by martial law. It was the first of a series of four bills that the Radicals passed that year.

1867 – Jacob Zeilin, Colonel Commandant of the Marine Corps from 30 June 1864, was this date promoted to the rank of Brigadier General Commandant, the first time Congress authorized this rank for the Marine Corps. The statute, however, was repealed in June 1874 so that the rank of Commandant would again revert to colonel upon Zeilin’s retirement.

1876 – Birthday of Civil Engineer Corps.

1877 – Congress accepts an electoral commission’s decision that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the disputed presidential election of the previous November. Three days later, Hayes was inaugurated as the 19th U.S. president. The result was greeted with outrage by some Northern Democrats. One of President Hayes’ first acts was to end the federal military occupation of the South and to recognize Democratic control over the region, thus bringing the Reconstruction era to a close.

1889 – Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Bill, proclaiming unassigned lands in the public domain; the first step toward the famous Oklahoma Land Rush.

1899 – President McKinley signed a measure creating the rank of Admiral of the Navy for Adm. George Dewey.

1901 – Congress passed the Platt amendment, which limited Cuban autonomy as a condition for withdrawal of U.S. troops and makes Puerto Rico a protectorate.

1908 – An international conference on arms reduction opened in London.

1917 – Congress passes the Jones Act, making Puerto Rico a United States Territory and Puerto Ricans, US citizens.

1925 – The first nationwide highway numbering system was instituted by the joint board of state and federal highway officials appointed by the secretary of agriculture. In order to minimize confusion caused by the array of multiform state-appointed highway signs, the board created the shield-shaped highway number markers that have become a comforting sight to lost travelers in times since.

Later, interstate highway numbering would be improved by colored signs and the odd-even demarcation that distinguishes between north-south and east-west travel respectively. As America got its kicks on Route 66, it did so under the aegis of the trusty shield. For instance, in the east, there is U.S. 1 that runs from New England to Florida and in the west, the corresponding highway, U.S. 101, from Tacoma, WA to San Diego, CA.

March 2nd ~ {continued...}

1929 – The Jones Act, the last gasp of the Prohibition, is passed by Congress. Since 1920 when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect, the United States had banned the production, importation and sale of alcoholic beverages. But the laws were ineffective at actually stopping the consumption of alcohol. The Jones Act strengthened the federal penalties for bootlegging. Of course, within five years the country ended up rejecting Prohibition and repealing the Eighteenth Amendment.

Prohibition was never particularly popular across the nation and when the people slowly realized that it had other ramifications, it rapidly fell by the wayside. The chief problem with Prohibition is that it didn’t stop the public’s demand for alcohol. Although consumption did drop in raw numbers, it remained substantial. In order to fill this demand, an entire criminal infrastructure was created virtually overnight. The enormous amounts of money that were available in illegal trafficking helped established organized crime. The nation’s major cities were dominated by criminal syndicates that could afford to bribe officials throughout the criminal justice system.

This, in turn, produced a significant change in law enforcement. For the first time, the federal government became a major player in policing and prosecuting law breakers. Many feel that Prohibition also caused a major breakdown in the social fabric because of its effect on the national psyche. With so many of the people brazenly ignoring the law, an atmosphere of cynicism and hypocrisy was established. When the Eighteenth Amendment was finally repealed, Prohibition was widely viewed as a total failure.

1939 – The Massachusetts legislature voted to ratify the Bill of Rights, 147 years after the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution had gone into effect.

1943 – U.S. and Australian land-based planes begin an offensive against a convoy of Japanese ships in the Bismarck Sea, in the western Pacific. On March 1, U.S. reconnaissance planes spotted 16 Japanese ships en route to Lae and Salamaua in New Guinea. The Japanese were attempting to keep from losing the island and their garrisons there by sending 7,000 reinforcements and aircraft fuel and supplies.

But a U.S. bombing campaign, beginning March 2 and lasting until the March 4, consisting of 137 American bombers supported by U.S. and Australian fighters, destroyed eight Japanese troop transports and four Japanese destroyers. More than 3,000 Japanese troops and sailors drowned as a consequence, and the supplies sunk with their ships. Of 150 Japanese fighter planes that attempted to engage the American bombers, 102 were shot down.

It was an utter disaster for the Japanese–the U.S. 5th Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force dropped a total of 213 tons of bombs on the Japanese convoy. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill chose March 4, the official end of the battle, to congratulate President Franklin D. Roosevelt, since that day was also the 10th anniversary of the president’s first inauguration. “Accept my warmest congratulations on your brilliant victory in the Pacific, which fitly salutes the end of your first 10 years.”

1943 – US forces recover Sbeitla, Tunisia and advance toward Feriana. To their north, the British hold against Axis attacks.

1944 – A second 1000 men from the US 5th Cavalry Regiment arrives at Los Negros. Meanwhile, the American forces already on the island capture Momote airfield with fire support from destroyers offshore.

1944 – Lend-Lease aid to Turkey is cut off because it is reluctant to join the war on the Allied side or make any other contribution to the war effort.

1945 – Trier is captured by units of US 20th Corps, part of US 3rd Army. The US 1st Army, to the north, is extending its advance beyond the Erft River toward Cologne and to the south. US 9th Army captures Roermond and Venlo on the Maas on the left flank of its advance while on the right, the Rhine River is reached opposite Dusseldorf.

March 2nd ~ {continued...}

1945 – Elements of US Task Force 58, consisting of 4 cruisers and 15 destroyers, under the command of Admiral Whiting, bombard Okino Daito Jima.

1946 – Ho Chi Minh was elected president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

1949 – The Lucky Lady II (USAF B-50 Superfortress), landed at Fort Worth , Texas, after completing the first non-stop, round-the-world flight: 23,452-mis in 94 hours.

1950 – Silly Putty was introduced as a toy. Silly Putty was accidentally invented by Earl Warrick, a Dow scientist, while searching for a silicone-based rubber substance during WW II.

1951 – The U.S. Navy launched the K-1, the first modern submarine designed to hunt enemy submarines.

1953 – The United Nations Command continued to reaffirm that it never engaged in germ warfare in Korea.

1962 – JFK announced US will resume above ground nuclear testing.

1965 – Operation Rolling Thunder begins with more than 100 United States Air Force jet bombers striking an ammunition depot at Xom Bang, 10 miles inside North Vietnam.

1966 – There were some 215,000 US soldiers in Vietnam.

1967 – The United States performed a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.

1968 – When the siege of Khe Sanh ended in Vietnam, the U.S. Marines stationed there were still in control of the mountain top.

1968 – USAF displayed Lockheed C-5A Galaxy, biggest plane in the world.

1970 – Supreme Court ruled draft evaders can not be penalized after 5 years.

1972 – Pioneer 10, the world’s first outer-planetary probe, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet. In December 1973, after successfully negotiating the asteroid belt and a distance of 620 million miles, Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter and sent back to Earth the first close-up images of the spectacular gas giant.

In June 1983, the NASA spacecraft left the solar system and the next day radioed back the first scientific data on interstellar space. NASA officially ended the Pioneer 10 project on March 31, 1997, with the spacecraft having traveled a distance of some six billion miles.

Headed in the direction of the Taurus constellation, Pioneer 10 will pass within three light years of another star–Ross 246–in the year 34,600 A.D. Bolted to the probe’s exterior wall is a gold-anodized plaque, 6 by 9 inches in area, that displays a drawing of a human man and woman, a star map marked with the location of the sun, and another map showing the flight path of Pioneer 10. The plaque, intended for intelligent life forms elsewhere in the galaxy, was designed by astronomer Carl Sagan.

1970 – Supreme Court ruled draft evaders can not be penalized after 5 years.

March 2nd ~ {continued...}

1973 – Women begin pilot training in U.S. Navy.

1973 – Federal forces surrounded Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which was occupied by members of the militant American Indian Movement who were holding at least 10 hostages.

1973 – Arab commandos, “Black September” terrorists, led by Abu Jihad executed 3 hostages in Khartoum, Sudan, after Pres. Nixon refused their demands. US ambassador Cleo A. Noel, deputy George Curtis Moore and Belgian charge d’affaires Guy Eid. The operation was later reported to have been organized by Yasser Arafat.

1974 – A grand jury in Washington, D.C. concluded that President Nixon was indeed involved in the Watergate cover-up.

1981 – The United States planned to send 20 more advisors and $25 million in military aid to El Salvador.

1988 – The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to order the United States to submit to binding arbitration its plan to close the observer mission of the Palestine Liberation Organization. A federal court later stopped the U.S.

1989 – A grenade attack in downtown Panama killed a U.S. soldier and injured 28 other people at the My Place discotheque on Via Espania and Calle 50.

1991 – The United Nations Security Council passes Security Council Resolution 686 establishing cease-fire terms. The United Nations requires Iraq to rescind its annexation of Kuwait, to accept in principle liability for damages and injuries caused by the invasion and occupation of Kuwait, to release coalition POWs immediately, to release all Kuwaitis, third country nationals, and remains in Iraqi government possession, to return all stolen Kuwaiti property, to end all military action, to identify mines and booby traps (and disclose information on any chemical or biological weapons stored) in areas of Iraq occupied by coalition forces.

1991 – Iraq released CBS newsman Bob Simon and his crew, held captive for nearly six weeks.

1991 – Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq and the Kurds rose up against Iraqi forces but were crushed by Iraqi armor that killed 50,000 and forced more than a million Kurds to flee to Turkey and Iran.

1993 – Members of 10th Mountain Divisions Bravo Company 2/87 Infantry fight their way out of a crossfire in Kismaayo. 4 grunts, while pinned down, kill 9 Somalis. No US casualties.

1995 – The space shuttle STS-67 (Endeavour 8) blasted off to study the far reaches of the universe.

1995 – The last U.N. peacekeepers in Somalia were evacuated.

1998 – The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves Resolution 1154 endorsing Secretary Kofi Annan’s agreement with Iraq on weapons inspections which includes the controversial presidential palaces. The Resolution threatens any Iraqi violation of the agreement with the “severest consequences.”

1998 – Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter’s moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

1999 – In Uganda Hutu rebels killed 8 hostages and 4 Ugandans. Among the dead were Americans Robert Haubner and Susan Miller of Hillsboro, Ore. They were there to track the mountain gorillas. Uganda insisted that the 2 Americans, 4 Britons and 2 New Zealanders died in a police rescue bid.

March 2nd ~ {continued...}

2000 – Dr. Larry C. Ford committed suicide just days after a botched assassination attempt on his business partner at Biofem Inc., of Irvine, Calif. Ford had met with scientists from South Africa’s Project Coast in the 1980s to discuss chemical and biological warfare under Wouter Basson, head of the project.

Project Coast, which has been accused of trying to create deadly bacteria that would only affect blacks, poisoning opponents’ clothing and stockpiling cholera, HIV and anthrax, opened an offshore bank account to pay Ford. In 2002 former FBI informant Peter Fitzpatrick told “60 Minutes” that Ford passed a bag filled with cholera, typhoid, botulism, anthrax and bubonic plague to a South African military doctor during a meeting at the house of the South African trade attache in California.

2001 – In Afghanistan the Taliban began the destruction of the giant Buddha of Bamiyan despite int’l. protests. The United Nations tried in vain to persuade Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban to reverse its decision to destroy a pair of giant, ancient statues of Buddha and other Buddhist relics that the regime considered idolatrous.

2002 – U.S. and Afghan forces launched an offensive, Operation Anaconda, on al-Qaeda and Taliban forces entrenched in the mountains of Shahi-Kot southeast of Gardez. The Mujahideen forces, who used small arms, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars, were entrenched into caves and bunkers in the hillsides at an altitude that was largely above 10,000 feet (3,000 m).

They used “hit and run” tactics, opening fire on the U.S. and Afghan forces and then retreating back into their caves and bunkers to weather the return fire and persistent U.S. bombing raids. To compound the situation for the coalition troops, U.S. commanders initially underestimated the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces as a last isolated pocket numbering fewer than 200. It turned out that the guerrillas numbered between 1,000–5,000 according to some estimates and that they were receiving reinforcements..

2003 – UN weapons inspectors returned to an Iraqi military compound to supervise the disposal of more outlawed Al Samoud 2 rockets.

2003 – North Korea deployed 4 MiGs to intercept a US RC-135S spy plane some 150 miles off its coast.

2003 – The United Arab Emirates won support from Kuwait and Bahrain in its call for Saddam Hussein to quit power to avert a war.

2003 – US officials say that US warplanes patrolling the southern no-fly zone in Iraq have attacked four military communications facilities and one air defence facility after Iraqi forces fired at US and British planes.

2004 – NASA scientists reported that the Mars rover Opportunity had discovered evidence that water was once present on the surface.

2005 – President Bush demanded in blunt terms that Syria get out of Lebanon.

2005 – In Florida dozens of dolphins beached on the Florida Keys. Sonar from a US submarine was later suspected.

2005 – Pakistani police arrested a man wanted in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and already sentenced to death in absentia for a hotel bombing that killed 11 French engineers.

2006 – Just two days before U.S. President George W. Bush is scheduled to visit Pakistan, a car bomb exploded in the Marriott Hotel Karachi parking lot adjacent to a United States consulate in Karachi, killing at least four people including a US diplomat and his driver and injuring at least fifty others.

2007 – The Bush administration selects a design from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for a new generation of nuclear warheads scheduled to replace the Trident missile on submarines by 2012.

2007 – The United States Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey resigns over poor conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. President Bush later orders a full review of health care available to returning soldiers.

2011 – Two United States Air Force personnel are killed and two others injured after a gunman opens fire at Frankfurt Airport in Germany.

2011 – The United States military files new charges against Private Bradley Manning in relation to the leak of the Wik iLeaks cables.

2011 – Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of US politician Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, is denied parole again in California.

March 3rd ~

1747 – Kasimir Pulaski, US General (Revolutionary War), was born.

1776 – First amphibious landing operation. Continental naval squadron under Commodore Esek Hopkins lands Sailors and Marines, commanded by Captain Samuel Nicholas, on New Providence Island in the Bahamas, capturing urgently-needed ordnance and gunpowder. The Battle of Nassau (March 3–4, 1776) was a naval action and amphibious assault by American forces against the British port of Nassau, Bahamas, during the American War of Independence. It is considered the first cruise and one of the first engagements of the newly established Continental Navy and the Continental Marines, the progenitors of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The action was also the Marines’ first amphibious landing. It is sometimes known as the Raid of Nassau.

Departing from Cape Henlopen, Delaware, on February 17, 1776, the fleet arrived in the Bahamas on March 1, with the objective of seizing gunpowder and munitions that were known to be stored there. Two days later the marines went ashore and seized Fort Montagu at the eastern end of the Nassau harbor, but did not advance to the town, where the gunpowder was stored. That night, Nassau’s governor had most of the gunpowder loaded aboard ships that then sailed for St. Augustine. On March 4, the colonial marines advanced and took control of the poorly defended town. The colonial forces remained at Nassau for two weeks, and took away all the remaining gunpowder and munitions they could.

1779 – The Battle of Brier Creek was an American Revolutionary War battle fought near the confluence of Brier Creek with the Savannah River in eastern Georgia. A Patriot force consisting principally of militia from North Carolina and Georgia was surprised, suffering significant casualties.

1791 – Congress established the U.S. Mint.

1791 – The 1st Internal Revenue Act taxed distilled spirits and carriages.

1805 – Louisiana-Missouri Territory formed.

1809 – Five-year enlistments in the Marine Corps replaced the previous three-year terms.

1812 – US Congress passed its 1st foreign aid bill providing aid to Venezuela earthquake victims.

1813 – Office of Surgeon General of the US army was established.

1817 – Mississippi Territory was divided into Alabama Territory and Mississippi.

1817 – The first commercial steamboat route from Louisville to New Orleans was opened.

1819 – Congress authorized the revenue cutters to protect merchant vessels of United States against piracy and to seize vessels engaged in slave trade. The cutters Louisiana and Alabama were built shortly thereafter to assist in the government’s efforts against piracy.

1820 – After months of bitter debate, Congress passes the Missouri Compromise, a bill that temporarily resolves the first serious political clash between slavery and antislavery interests in U.S. history. On March 3, 1820, Congress passed a bill granting Missouri statehood as a slave state under the condition that slavery was to be forever prohibited in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36th parallel, which runs approximately along the southern border of Missouri.

In addition, Maine, formerly part of Massachusetts, was admitted as a free state, thus preserving the balance between Northern and Southern senators. The Missouri Compromise, although criticized by many on both sides of the slavery debate, succeeded in keeping the Union together for more than 30 years. In 1854, it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which dictated that slave or free status was to be decided by popular vote in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska; though both were north of the 36th parallel.

March 3rd ~ {continued...}

1836 – Texans celebrate the first Texas Independence Day with the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence, officially broke Texas from Mexico, and creating the Republic of Texas.

1837 – US President Andrew Jackson and Congress recognized the Republic of Texas.

1839 – Congress directed that Revenue Captain Ezekial Jones, commanding the revenue cutter Washington in the Seminole War, be allowed the same pay as a lieutenant in the Navy would receive for like services.

1843 – US Congress appropriated $30,000 “to test the practicability of establishing a system of electro-magnetic telegraphs.”

1845 – For the first time, the U.S. Congress passed legislation on this day overriding a President’s veto. President John Tyler was in office at the time.

1845 – Congress authorized ocean mail contracts for foreign mail delivery.

1845 – Florida became the 27th state. Florida is a state in the southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida.

1849 – Congress created the Minnesota Territory. The Territory of Minnesota was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed May 11, 1858, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Minnesota. The boundaries of the Minnesota Territory, as carved out of Iowa Territory, included the current Minnesota region and most of what later became Dakota Territory east of the Missouri River. Minnesota Territory also included portions of Wisconsin Territory that did not become part of Wisconsin, located between the Mississippi River and Wisconsin, including the Arrowhead Region.

1855 – Congress approved $30,000 to test camels for military use. Sec. of War Jefferson Davis sent agents to northern Africa to purchase a small herd of camels and sent them to New Mexico to transport goods to California.

1862 – The Siege of New Madrid, Missouri begins. With the surrender of Forts Henry and Donelson, Tennessee, and the evacuation of Columbus, Kentucky, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, commander of the Confederate Army of the Mississippi, chose Island No. 10, about 60 river miles below Columbus, to be the strongpoint for defending the Mississippi River. Nearby was New Madrid, one of the weak points. Brig. Gen. John Pope, commander of the Union Army of the Mississippi, set out from Commerce, Missouri, to attack New Madrid, on February 28. The force marched overland through swamps, lugging supplies and artillery, reached the New Madrid outskirts on March 3, and laid siege to the city.